Some of the things they do are incomprehensible to those of us who just walk into the grocery store and grab a nicely packaged steak without ever seeing the cow it came from. This semi-autobiographical novel will upset some readers who are even remotely sensitive to animal deaths. He lives by a simple code but it’s an honorable one. Papa has buried two stillborn sons, he takes care of an elderly aunt, he works hard on another man’s farm, and yet finds time to take excellent care of his own land. Even when he’s proved his back is strong.'” When a man cannot do those things, people think his head is weak. “‘Then why can’t you vote? Is it because you’re a Shaker?’ He’s an intelligent man who never got an education. Reading this for the first time as an adult, Papa’s story touched me just as much as Robert’s. There’s truly a season for everything in his world yet he still stops to appreciate a lovely day. He’s also much more in tune with nature than most of us today will ever be. He has an inner strength that sometimes feels rare these days. It’s easy to giggle at his naivete but I ultimately respected him and the choices he had to make. It’s a striking contrast and could make for a good discussion. But he also has a practical knowledge of survival and animal husbandry.
Robert is fairly innocent in the ways of the world (he thinks that the tiny town of Rutledge, Vermont is almost as big as London). I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this book but I ultimately found it to be a surprisingly touching story of a boy on the cusp of manhood.
But Papa is also passing down practical wisdom for running a farm and the qualities of a good man and a good neighbor. Papa makes sure that Robert goes to school to learn how to read and write, opportunities he himself never had. His father works hard to keep the farm going but he also works slaughtering pigs for a neighbor. Twelve-year-old Robert is a Shaker growing up in Vermont.
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